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Martin YB-10, Air Mail Route 18, April, 1934


Old Man
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The kit is the old Williams Brothers 1/72 B-10B offering.

 

post-157584-0-35246200-1491761652_thumb.jpg

 

 

This model represents the first YB-10 to go into air mail service on the west coast, ceremonially dubbed 'City of Oakland' in a formal christening on April 19, 1934. Though I am not certain, I strongly suspect this machine was the flagship for the final trans-continental mail run on May 8th. All YB-10s were delivered in Olive Drab and Orange Yellow, and while on air mail service were not repainted in accordance with the February directive that fuselages be rendered blue in future, though they were repainted before the Alaska flight. Here is footage of YB-10 'City of Oakland' in flight, and at its christening....

 

 

 

http://mirc.sc.edu/islandora/object/usc%3A12361

 

 

I built the kit pretty much OOB, except for small changes necessary to represent a YB-10 instead of a B-10B (scratch-built air-scoops atop the cowlings, and exhaust venting at the lower rear of the cowlings). I made no attempt to detail the interior, apart from what the kit provides. I thought the kit raked the landing gear legs a bit too far backwards, and putting them at the angle I thought they should have made it necessary to extend the rear braces by about 4mm. The kit piece for the bomb-aiming window got clouded on the inside by primer over-spray (how it happened I am not quite sure, but suspect leaking through a small crack in the join), and so I had to make my own replacement piece. I put in a blanking bulkhead behind the turret. Decals are mostly from the kit, and from an old MicroScale sheet that came with it when I bought it second-hand years ago off Plane Trading here. That had 'Oakland', but not the smaller 'city of' above it; those I made from dry transfer letters on clear film. Paint is home mixes of various Model Master and old PollyScale acrylics, cut with Future and applied by brush, then given a going over between coats with a 3000 grit and a 5000 grit polishing pad. Army policy at this time was to maintain a polished, even a waxed surface, on aircraft, and these were pretty new, and certainly were well maintained, so I made no particular attempt at weathering or indications of wear. There is always a certain variance when you mix each coat of a color, and apply the paint sparingly and sand it, and that seemed to me enough for this show-horse. In the video linked to above, the machine does not seem to be rigged with a radio array (there is a point where the wing-tip is shown from quite close), so I did not do radio rigging.

 

This kit has a number of good points, and of course that it exists at all is a solid point in its favor --- if you want a kit of this quite significant aircraft in 1/72 scale, this is what is available. Surface detail is nicely done, and fit of major components no particular problem. I liked the socket arrangement for the wing to fuselage joints very much. There are a lot of serious ejector towers, though, some inconveniently located, and a great deal of heavy flash. It can be difficult to tell flash from part at times when doing prep work. I don't know if the recently re-issued kits are better or worse in this regard than the old item I built.

 

The real difficulty is the clear pieces. They simply do not fit, not without a great deal of work, more work than I expect most people would want to put into the matter. The canopies are thicker on the port side than the starboard, which complicates the matter of getting the pieces to fit. It is necessary to bevel the interior mating surfaces a great deal to accommodate the curve of the fuselage, and to put a curve into the mating surfaces of the windscreen portions as well. I found it necssary to cut away some of the fuselage mating surface to get the windscreen portion of the rear canopy to fit. In all instances, pressure was required when actually gluing the pieces in place to get the barely acceptable fit that was managed. The clear pieces were Future dipped to get the insides shiny, then after the canopy mating seams to the fuselage were filled and sanded down, the outside was stripped, then polished with fine grit pads, baking soda, and Novaris polish. They still retain much of their 'Coke-bottle bottom' character even so. I made no attempt to 'blend in' the clam-shell piece at the rear, as I have seen a close-up photograph of this from the right rear, and there was appreciable daylight between its bottom frame and the fuselage top. Framing was put in with painted decal strip, stuck down with Future. The turret is a bit different. A lot of work needs to be done on the fuselage 'mouth' the turret sets back into. Edges have to be thinned, especially at the bottom, and a deeper curve cut in at the top. Otherwise there will be bad gaps. I found it necessary to fill in at the front of the 'ring' with some shim plastic, but that could just have been me.

 

 

 

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The Army Air Corps transported air mail exclusively between Feb. 19 and May 8, 1934. This was part of the fall-out from a Senate investigation of apparent irregularities in the process by which the Post Office had, in 1929, let contracts for transport of air mail to commercial firms. The Army air Corps was not, at this time capable of sustaining regular long distance flights by night and in bad weather, but most civilians, including political figures at the highest levels, thought it could do this, owing to a calculated plan of publicity and booster-ism orchestrated by Army Air Corps leadership. A large number of fatal accidents made the episode into a scandal of its own, and the previous system of allocating contracts to commercial companies reinstated. The pre-production batch of YB-10s was committed to the air mail on both coasts in April, and proved equal to the task, though on two occasions Martins were bellied in by pilots who forgot they had to lower landing gear. On May 7, YB-10s flew from Oakland to Newark loaded with mail, and set a record for ground speed in trans-continental flight doing so.

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Proud Kraut

Old Man, that's a great bird, very well done! Pictures of the box and the unbuilt kit, many pictures of the built plane, a very well researched history of the original plane and a very detailed description of your work - that's IMHO a perfect modeling thread! Thanks very much for sharing your project here.

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The Meatcan

really an excellent build! Love the paint job. Birds of that era were sure colorful. Good work on polishing an old gem, Old Man!

Terry

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Thanks a lot, guys.

 

I don't usually go into so much detail on how a thing got built, but this is a kit a lot of people bounce off of, and might be better able to see it through if they knew what to expect and got some idea of what might help. This a favorite aircraft of mine, and I like to see them built up. The kit is build-able, but does need care. The brothers who made the moulds made their own machinery, and used aluminum instead of steel. They grew up doing wooden models in the thirties, and made plastic kits for aircraft from their boyhood days, so they chose some subjects from the 'Golden Age' few manufacturers today would consider.

 

It was certainly a colorful period for U.S. military aircraft. The main concerns were visibility, to aid in search for machines suffering forced landings and to reduce mid-air collisions, and to display unit identification. Camouflage was not a consideration: if needed, it was to be achieved by painting over the standard finish with water-based temporary paints.

 

The nearest thing to a U.S. type I am working on now is a U.S.-built Martin pusher used in the Mexican Revolution; I will have to build it from scratch....

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